And who is useless now? is an original performance about a man, four robots, one slightly elitist artificial intelligence, and the transfer of responsibility to technology.
While U. I. Wendy is trying to use art to be accepted by people as a thinking being, Florent, who shares the stage with her, begins to question his own human thinking. How much freedom and humanity are we ready to sacrifice for our comfort?
The performance is inspired by the ideas of Alan Turing, who laid the foundations of modern computer science, and Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in the field of machine thinking. Both believed that the human mind was just a very complex machine.
About the artists:
Ondrej Holba (* 1988)
Director, actor, and lecturer.
I graduated from the Department of Pantomime at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. I specialize in original movement theatre, contemporary circus, and circus teaching. Since 2010, I have been working as an actor at the Circus Sacra Theatre. I have performed my shows at the festivals Letní Letná, Cirk UFF, Cirkopolis, Mime Fest, Kremnické Gagy and many others.
I collaborate with artists from all over the world. In my work, I focus on contemporary circus and original theatre and the promotion of these international trends in the Czech Republic. In collaboration with the Finnish director and clown Herne Väätäinen, I created original productions Still Life and And Who Is Useless Now? Currently, I am interested in the possibility of using robotics and artificial intelligence in theatre clown performances. I look for inspiration in the philosophical approaches to artificial intelligence (e.g., A. Turing, M. Minksy, etc.), in fine arts, music, and working with light, while striving for a balanced connection of these features. In recent years, I have directed my original show The Cuckoo – Stayed Human Nevertheless (2017), Parasite (2019) and Johhny & Jenny (2020). In 2019, I completed my milestone project And Who Is Useless Now?, which was selected for the European projects Circolaborative Tools, Circus Next +, and the Czech Dance Platform Festival.
Florent Golfier (*1990)
Florent was born in Nancy, France, where he studied drama. After that, he got involved in physical theatre and contemporary dance, and graduated from the Clown, Stage and Film Creation at JAMU in Brno. In addition to his original solo performance Umbilicus (2014), he has been collaborating with Lukáš Karásek (Tešlon and Frkl, Les Fantômes, Pierer and Higher) since 2013. He also appears as a performer in the following shows: Pisum Sativum (Karine Ponties, 2012), Body Anatomy in Dance (Carlo Locatelli 2014), Out of Service and Error (Vít Nezval, 2015, 2017), "12" and Stafet (Kitt Johnson, 2015, 2017) and as a member of the tYhle platform in the performance Un, LEGOrytmus and Medusa (Marie Gourdain, 2016, 2017, 2019).